


Reflections from a Cynic

by Jadzibelle



Category: Haven - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 09:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4430375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jadzibelle/pseuds/Jadzibelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris Brody doesn't like people much.</p><p>That is not improved by people liking him.</p><p>Though maybe he can tolerate one or two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reflections from a Cynic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dancinguniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinguniverse/gifts).



At the end of the day, it really came down to this: Chris Brody just wanted to be left alone.

He’d never wanted much more than that.  His father had always _pushed_ , had always wanted Chris to want _great things_ for himself, had always _insisted_ that he could have anything he wanted, be anything he wanted, but Chris had never bought that particular line.  See, he’d watched his father- with his mother, with his step-mother, with his crowds of adoring fans (at times, more adoring than others)- and what he saw there...  It wasn’t _greatness_.  It wasn’t even enviable.  It was shallow, it was meaningless, it was _cheap_.

Chris wanted more for himself than _cheap_.

But there were always people looking for an advantage, there were always people who _wanted_ something.  And Chris was the mayor’s kid.

It’d set in for real when he was about thirteen, when he’d overheard a couple of kids in his class talking about the ‘Back to School’ party his father had _insisted_ they throw- and how their parents were _insisting_ they go, because he was the mayor’s kid.  Because there was some advantage implied by being his friend.  It’d hurt, even though he honestly hadn’t cared about the opinions of those particular peers until exactly that moment- it wasn’t _them_ so much as the truth that he hadn’t been meant to hear.  His friendship was politically valuable, was a commodity to cultivate.  It wasn’t something to be sought out on its own merit.

It was easier to just- _assume_ , after that, that everyone wanted something, that everyone was _after_ something.  Less disappointment that way.  So that’s what he did, and maybe it was lonely, but at least it wasn’t cheap.  And he didn’t mind the quiet, so much.  When the loneliness got to be too much, he’d go down to the water, walk along the beach, listen to the gulls and the terns.  The ocean was good company; it didn’t ask anything of him, didn’t expect anything from him.  It just did what it did, whether he was there or not.

It was the one relationship he had he could _trust_.

Marine biology just seemed like the natural place to go from there.  And if, by the time he’d started college, he was so used to assuming the worst from people that he kept everyone around him at a distance, well, he still didn’t mind the quiet, and he still had the ocean.  He understood it better, now, knew so much more about the complexity of it, the richness of its inner life- the threats it faced, from idiot people who took what they wanted without considering the consequences, who put their needs first in all things.

People.  Chris _really_ didn’t like people.

He hadn’t planned on going back to Haven, really.  He’d planned to go somewhere warmer, somewhere exotic, somewhere like Baja, or Fiji, or Port-au-Prince.  It turned out, though, that a _lot_ of people wanted to work somewhere warmer, somewhere more exotic, and that it was surprisingly hard to get a research position somewhere when everyone who could put in a reference for you kinda hated your guts.  So he’d ended up back in Haven anyway, back on his beaches, his coast, and maybe it wasn’t exotic or warm, but it was familiar and it was _his_.

And for a while, that was fine.  He walked the familiar coast, let himself learn it all again, better now.  He figured out where the threats were, what needed to be focused on, what he might be able to do something about.  It’d taken care of him for years, after all, it was only fair to return the favor.  And he had a theory about the electrical turbines, out off the coast, about the impact the new EM fields in the region were having on a few of the local strains of plankton, which sounded like a small thing- but everything sounded small in isolation, and nothing in the ocean was isolated, and if he could just _prove_ what he was seeing, maybe he’d be able to pull together some funding for a redesign of the turbines.

Of course, Haven was _Haven_ , and things... weren’t exactly normal in Haven.

He’d started to hear the whispers again, about a year after he’d come back home.  He’d ignored them, as best he could- he was a _scientist_ , and there was no science he’d ever seen that could make sense of the Troubles- but it got a lot harder to ignore when his dad was suddenly _popular_ again.  And not just in his smarmy small-town politician way, not just because of favors exchanged and carefully-chosen words and a remarkable ability to horn in on literally _any_ positive publicity; no, it was the creepy, fawning _adoration_ that Chris remembered from when he was a kid, from when his father and mother had just split up, the empty blank _devotion_ that made his skin crawl.

He hated seeing it.  Hated seeing his father _enjoy_ it.  He’d never understood that.

But hey, that was Haven, that was his dad, that was _people_.  He could put it aside, mostly, when he was working, when he was focusing on the things that made _sense_.  The ocean made sense, and when it _didn’t_ , there was a reason.  Something that could be tracked down and explained.  Maybe not by him, maybe not quickly, but eventually, by someone.

Eventually, it’d make sense.

Lightning demolishing a baseball diamond out of a clear blue sky, that didn’t make sense.

His father dying, that didn’t make sense.

Sitting across the table from a suspicious, pissed-off cop, trying to explain that what she was calling motive, he called an actual nightmare, that didn’t make sense.

Seriously, he’d had this nightmare, all that empty adoration fixed on him, vacant smiles and vacuous staring- he didn’t want it.  He’d never wanted it.  What he wanted was to finish the conversation he’d started with his father.  What he wanted was to not feel guilty for his anger.  What he _wanted_ was for it to be yesterday again, and _that_ , that would be a _useful_ Trouble, he’d trade in popularity for a second chance in a heartbeat.

But he couldn’t have any of those things, so he’d settle for understanding why, exactly, Detective Audrey Parker looked like she wanted to pour her coffee in his lap while everyone around her looked like they wanted his autograph.

He’d settle for understanding why, in a world full of _people_ , she stood out as a _person_.

Or, failing that, he’d settle for making it to the wake on time.  At least he’d be able to find a ride.

***

“This may be my worst nightmare,” he commented, stepping up beside Detective Parker, and she _jumped_ , which was funnier than it should be, honestly.  “How about a drink?”

“You’re in a lot of trouble and I don’t like you,” she replied, without hesitation, without even _trying_ to blunt the words.  Not a trace of pity in her, not even standing in front of his father’s casket.  Thank God.

“Believe me, you have no idea how great that makes you,” he said, and he _meant_ it.  “How about we take a walk down by the beach, I’ll show you the phytoplankton bloom.”  And okay, he wasn’t exactly good at this, hadn’t made a lot of effort to learn, but whatever, he didn’t want her to _like_ him, he wanted her to continue to make that slightly confused, slightly disbelieving face and throwing insults and suspicion in his direction.

Which, admittedly, wasn’t exactly a standard date, but it was _miles_ better than fawning.  And, bonus, that’d apparently actually been enough to ruffle Chief Wuornos’s feathers a little, maybe if he worked hard enough, he could score a whole _two_ people who actively disliked him.  The thought was darkly amusing, and he reached for a bottle of wine-

***

Glass was not conductive.

It wasn’t a useful thought.  It was Haven, nothing worked the way it was supposed to.  He _knew that_ , but he kept coming back to that point.

Glass was not conductive, but the wine bottle had zapped him anyway.

He really should’ve tried harder to get that position in Port-au-Prince.

***

In some ways, dating Audrey Parker turned out to be _exactly_ what he’d wanted, in that first impulsive instant when he’d asked her if she wanted to go for a drink.

She put her job first, had a _gift_ for stumbling into Troubles, didn’t hesitate to tell him off when he was in the way, didn’t disguise her frustration or irritation when he slowed her down- she was an intense, workaholic, slightly abrasive _superhero_ in a town full of randomly developing and usually not ill-meaning but still highly destructive supervillains, and he was just not cutting it as Lois Lane.

And somehow, despite all of that, she still seemed to actually be kind of fond of him, under the eye-rolling and sharp words.  Like, actually fond of him, in the real, human, _genuine_ way he’d stopped believing in when he was thirteen.  She had to be; she sure wasn’t getting much _advantage_ out of him following her around, she wasn’t subject to the smothering ‘LIKE ME’ charisma of his Trouble, and he was cynical enough to recognize _pity_ when he saw it and this wasn’t pity.

It was nice, it was _satisfying_ , knowing that.

It was also terrifying and overwhelming and he had _not_ been adequately prepared for the reality of getting involved with someone who constantly found themselves at the center of every impossible damn thing that happened in this freaky little town.  Seriously, dropping off a file on the way out for drinks should’ve been a minor distraction.  One he was complaining about, sure, but that was how he was, and she seemed perfectly happy to have a chance to snark back- and she was _clearly_ a little bit of a sadist, under all that noble hero exterior, because she got this very distinctive _glint_ in her eyes, a wicked kind of amusement, when Chris couldn’t extricate himself from _people_ quickly enough.

Though he couldn’t quite tell if she was _amused_ or _speculative_ when Mrs. Crocker suggested they should all ‘go out’, and _that_ was just a little more than he was prepared to deal with before one _actual_ date.

Which was not the point, the point was, she’d been delivering an envelope.  Simple, straightforward, should’ve been a meaningless delay, and yet.

And yet.

So it was a couple hours of overwhelming terror and eldritch horror vines before they managed to get to their date.  He could probably have dealt with that, honestly.  Maybe he’d kind of fallen apart right at the beginning, after all, but he’d pulled it together, eventually, he’d come up with an _answer_ , eventually, and it was kind of nice to be useful.  ...To a point.

So implementation wasn’t his strong suit.  It didn’t need to be, Audrey had that entirely under control.

And he did mean it; dinner at her place was a lot nicer than what he’d been planning.

Implementation.  He’d remember that.

***

The gap between that night and the next morning got a little fuzzy, at one point.  He had the vague, uncomfortable sense that _something_ had happened.  Something had to have happened, to put so much fear in her eyes, to leave her in _tears_.  But her dramatic declaration about ‘ending the day once and for all’ didn’t give him much to work with, and then she was out the door, leaving him with firm instructions to _stay with Duke_.

Because _that_ was how he wanted to spend his morning.  Really.

But she was _scared_ , was serious, and it would’ve been kind of a dick move to ignore that and refuse to listen to her.  So he let her use him as a _distraction_ , as much as it grated.

And, honestly, the guy probably wasn’t that bad, when he wasn’t enthralled- some of what he said might even have been funny, if it weren’t mired in a desperate effort to impress- but _seriously_.  There was only so much intense discussion of maple syrup that Chris could handle, and he would’ve been just fine _not_ knowing that Audrey’s landlord/friend had a very... homespun urge to stuff people full of food.  Things like that, tiny personal details that he _shouldn’t know_ , they were nearly as uncomfortable as the constant attention.

At least once they got on the subject of sports, it was a little easier to keep the conversation _impersonal_.  ...Though it annoyed him more than it should that he couldn’t even get a little bit of decent, home-town-rivalry trash talk out of the guy; Duke was a Sea Dog, after all, and Chris wasn’t just a former Cutter, he coached the damn _team_ , that _alone_ should’ve made things interesting.  Those lines were drawn _deep_ , after all.

Not deep enough to overcome the magnificent awe of his Trouble, apparently.

Things got a little easier when, by sheer desperation, he pushed the conversation toward the ocean- the ocean was what he knew, what he was comfortable with, and it turned out that on _that_ subject, at least, there was some actual common ground, and it was easier to ignore dramatic embellishments in genuinely interesting stories than overt fawning.

Still, it was a relief, when Audrey and Chief Wuornos returned, though he was decidedly puzzled when it was the Chief who drew him aside, very pointedly keeping his eyes averted.

“She had a tough day,” he said, and Chris was pretty sure Wuornos was keeping something back, but calling him on it would probably require eye contact, and eye contact, while it would result in all the information he could want, would _also_ mean fawning, and Chris was okay with getting only part of the story if it meant not having to deal with that.  “Guy downtown, got hit by a car, she tried to save him, couldn’t pull it off.  Takin’ it kinda hard.”

“But she’s okay?” Chris asked, and the Chief quirked a humorless smile.

“Not hurt, but wouldn’t say she’s okay,” he said, and Chris nodded.

“Right.  ...Thanks.”

Wuornos shrugged, and headed back outside, back to Audrey, and Chris knew enough to know he wasn’t wanted there yet, shouldn’t intrude, even if he _really_ wanted a break from babysitting duty.

When Wuornos came back in the second time, stepped around him and headed for the bar, that seemed like a safe signal that he could go check on Audrey.  There was _distance_ in her eyes, shadows that had a physical weight, and he knew from the minute she glanced at him how the conversation was going to end.

It hurt more than it should; he’d known her for a week, they’d managed one sort-of date, it was hardly to have and to hold.

But she’d been _real_ , she’d been genuine, and it was the first time in a very long time he’d had that.  Maybe the first time he’d ever had that.

He was a little surprised when she brought up London; he was very sure he hadn’t _mentioned_ London, but her knowing something he hadn’t said honestly wasn’t the strangest thing he’d seen from her in the last week.  And her shaky insistence that he should go, that his work was important, it didn’t sound entirely like _goodbye_ , so he took a chance, asked about after.

So maybe her ‘yeah, definitely,’ sounded more like a platitude than an assurance; it wasn’t a ‘no’, he could work with that.

He left her alone with her thoughts; wherever she was, mentally, he couldn’t follow, and he didn’t know any other way to help than to give her the space she clearly wanted.  He, of all people, knew the value of that.  So he backed off, let her know that he’d be there, when she wanted, _if_ she wanted, and went back inside.

Duke cut himself off mid-sentence, turning away from Wuornos to look pointedly in the other direction; Wuornos just shifted in his chair, slightly more subtle but no less clearly avoiding any chance of even accidentally looking at him.  It was such a dramatic change that he couldn’t help but respond- it was a relief, honestly, and almost funny.

“Really, guys?  Really?” he asked, sitting down, and he could’ve chosen a spot that _wasn’t_ directly between them, but eh, whatever.  Watching them both actively project their attention at the walls was probably going to be the best part of his day, at this point.

“Only way it’s gonna work,” Duke replied, sounding torn between annoyance and embarrassment, which was probably fair.  He _had_ just spent the last four hours acting like a kid with a crush, and clearly Wuornos had clued him in as to _why_ \- he could’ve been taking it much worse.  At least he wasn’t _hostile_ about it.

“That’s how it has to be?” he asked.

“Yep, pretty much,” Duke agreed, nodding, and Wuornos exhaled a short, almost-soundless laugh.  And okay, so it wasn’t exactly ideal, and the situation overall still pretty much stank, but there was an odd sort of satisfaction in knowing that they knew, understood exactly what his Trouble could do, and were still sitting there.  Pointedly avoiding looking in his direction, but not actually _leaving_ , or demanding that he leave, just- adapting, one more strange hitch in a strange town, one that wasn’t important enough to worry about.

And awkward company it may be, but at least it wasn’t cheap.

They sat in silence for a long minute before Duke went around the bar, poured three drinks and passed them down without looking, and turned the bar’s television back on- sports commentary, nothing particularly interesting, but it was enough of an excuse to keep sitting there drinking in the middle of the day.

It was enough of an excuse to let them be alone with their thoughts, and really, that was about all anyone could ask for.


End file.
